The 4 Caballeros (Part 2)

1962 The San Fran­cisco Exam­iner PICTORIAL LIVING. When three of the four artists returned to San Fran­cisco, their sketches inspired paint­ings. The San Fran­cisco Examiner’s head­line “How Six Bay Eyes Saw Mexico” did not include the fourth artist, Willi Baum. Because at that time, Willi was back in Mexico, in San Miguel, where he was designing a mural there. So Willi was not shown in the photo with the Examiner’s story.

Sept/​Oct 1962 Commu­ni­cating Arts Maga­zine
Here also, are six pages showing the art and it includes the written comments from the artists. (The sketch that you see at the bottom of each page was a fifteen-​foot long, 360-​degree drawing that Earl Thol­lander made as he viewed the complete row of build­ings surrounding the open square where the artists were sketching.

On November 7, 1962, there was an exhi­bi­tion of sketches and paint­ings that were a result of the trip. It was held at the Art Unlim­ited Gallery in San Fran­cisco. The gallery was accessed from the ground floor and then a strait stair­case down to a base­ment. Willi had recently returned from San Miguel, but on the night of the gallery show, he appeared in a wheel­chair at the top of the long flight of stairs. The crowd showed concern about Willi’s condi­tion and worried how he planned to get to the lower level. Then, following his plan in “making an entrance” he stood up from the wheel­chair and casu­ally descended the stairs !
Not long after that occa­sion, Bill estab­lished a studio in New York. As a member of the Society of Illus­tra­tors, there, he received and awarded award of merit with his painting devel­oped from one of his sketches from the trip in Mexico (the last of the images that you see above). The four amigos, together Other sketch trips followed. Each of the four produced more and more paint­ings, beyond their commer­cial work.

Ann Thompson

Bill Shields – Friend And Artist

I first met Bill when he appeared in San Fran­cisco in 1960 and came to my studio on the recom­men­da­tion of a teacher, Marty Garrity, who taught cartooning at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art in Chicago. Bill studied there during the years 1945 to 1946 and I was there from 1948 to 1950. Marty kept tabs on most of his students and I’m sure he helped many to get together later when an oppor­tu­nity came up. Bill’s arrival in San Fran­cisco was smashing ! He had no problem in capti­vating his clien­tele with his stun­ning design and artwork. His illus­tra­tions were appearing every­where and his swift execu­tion kept him busy. He was up to the demand and never disap­pointed !

I was living in Mill Valley and Bill soon moved his family there. He and I, for a time, commuted into the city in his Porsche. We brought our fami­lies together on camping trips where we sketched. Bill brought his talents into play designing and finishing his home to his stan­dards. We often sketched together in the city and managed many week­ends trav­eling with other artists, sketching and painting in the Gold country and along the northern Cali­fornia coast. For two weeks in 1962 our artist friends, Earl Thol­lander and Will Baum, joined us on a trip to Mexico where we visited the west coast town of Guaymas and then we trav­eled south­east to an old cobble­stone town named Alamos. This is where we spent most of our time sketching and enjoying the great differ­ences from our lives in the Bay Area. On our way back north we visited the Joshua Tree National Park. Willi set his camera’s timer and staged this photo. Here are three quick sketches that I made of Bill.

After our return, we prepared a gallery show in San Fran­cisco of paint­ings devel­oped from some of our work accom­plished there in Mexico. During our stay in Mexico I renewed my aver­sion to the Amer­ican Cock­roach, which were plen­tiful there. My fellow artists decided to capture one and put it in an enve­lope and tucked it under my pillow. The scratching sound alerted me to their joke. Bill addressed some of his many envelopes, without roaches, that I received though the years as “Dickaroacha”. Many years later in Hawaii, I over­came the aver­sion, and lived with many such crea­tures.

I was always amazed that Bill’s embell­ished envelopes actu­ally made it to my mailbox. His collec­tion had a few of mine, like this last one that you see above.

In late 1962 (after the gallery show) Bill moved and worked in New York for quite a few years and in 1975 he returned to San Fran­cisco where he estab­lished his Artists Inn studio where he painted. He also taught at various acad­e­mies in the city and Bay Area. Lucky students ! My return from Hawaii to San Fran­cisco in 1982 gave us a chance to catch up and enjoy each other’s company and fami­lies, once again. Many lunches and partying happened through the years and an occa­sional sketch trip was always a joy.

Dick Moore

Cookbooks

“The Thou­sand Recipe Chinese Cook­book” (by Gloria Bley Miller). Artist : Earl Thol­lander Known for the many books that he wrote and illus­trated while drawing on loca­tion, Earl Thol­lander created a most masterful collec­tion of a specific culi­nary tech­nique. The collec­tion was first printed in 1966. It had a hard cover and 926 pages of recipes – instruc­tions and illus­tra­tions. Earl created the 400 illus­tra­tions – he described his method as “sitting at great number of loca­tions, right on the side­walk in the bustle of San Francisco’s Chinese commu­ni­ties”. There were also illus­tra­tions of areas in China and a complete study of the cooking tools and prod­ucts – so much a part of described cuisine. The book was reprinted through the 1960s, ’70s,’80s and ’90s with each with a different cover. The white cover seems the most compat­ible with the enclosed artwork. Even the soft­cover version in 1984 weighed over three pounds.

Earl Thol­lander Illus­tra­tions

“Sunset Recipe Annual, 1995 Edition” Artists : David Broad and Alice Harth. This, a 256 page, hard­cover book, includes an abun­dance of (289) beau­tiful photographs and the artistic touches of David Broad and Alice Harth. The book offers no printed credits to artists and photog­ra­phers. Names were printed tight to the photographs and David placed his name in his art and Alice signed with her initials.
David Broad, who’s other art styles have been featured in a past Geezer Gallery posting, was the artist bringing his unique humorous style to this annual collec­tion of recipes. Here, below, are exam­ples of just some of his15 illus­tra­tions in the book. Alice Harth, had a long asso­ci­a­tion with Sunset Publishing Corpo­ra­tion. Alice presented 51 illus­tra­tions of the foods next to the written recipes. These illus­tra­tions required her to create a display of the food and she had to devise the setting for each, with appro­priate deco­ra­tive objects appro­priate to the prepa­ra­tion and prepared foods. These render­ings did not reflect her normal artistic style, but were real­istic to aid in showing the 51 recipes – an alter­na­tive to the already exten­sive amount of photographs in the publi­ca­tion.
(Two exam­ples of Alice’s recog­nized indi­vidual style are shown here, also.)

David Broad Illus­tra­tions

Alice Harth Illus­tra­tions

Sunset’s “Gifts from Your Kitchen”, first printed in 1988. Artist : Dick Cole. Dick Cole was known for his fine art and commer­cial water­color paint­ings. I was surprised to see that there were some of his illus­tra­tions in this Sunset book. Besides the deco­ra­tive illus­tra­tions, Dick had the ability to show cooking proce­dures. Draw­ings that show precise methods – -“hands-​on” visual instruc­tions are often a neces­sary part of a recipe and not an example of style so much as the need to show a clear depic­tion of a proce­dure.

Dick Cole Illus­tra­tions

A Raisin Recipe Booklet

Above also is a quite unusual booklet of recipes created by the agency, J. Walter Thompson Company. They had the Cali­fornia Raisin Advi­sory Board as a client. I am guessing that was in the early 1970s.
Here, above, are some pages of the simple (12 page plus cover) collec­tion of recipes. The intro tells “The history of the little raisin”. The main expense for this simple booklet had to be purchase of the tiny velum envelopes and plastic magni­fiers, the printing of the tiny label reading : “RAISIN” and the handling, stapling it all to the inside cover of the folder. The five illus­tra­tions in the booklet were very simple line art. There is no refer­ence about the artist and I do not know the JWT art director on this project.

Ann Thompson

Working Toward a Career

If you know of students in high school, who are wondering which path to take, tell them that there are many choices that can lead to their final desti­na­tion.

An Art Student’s Port­folio (Early 60’s) In today’s art scene, my port­folio would be laughed at. The art tools changed through the years and now I know the beauty of the digital advan­tages. There is today, no need for that huge black port­folio – just a small thumb-​drive would do the job. But the generosity of time that was given to students in the past seems to have disap­peared. Resumes are required and pre-​interview selec­tions are made before personal meet­ings. It is not now, as friendly as it was.

FAMOUS ARTISTS SCHOOL My first art samples for my port­folio came from what I had learned from the “Famous Artists Schools” corre­spon­dence art course that I started while in my senior year of high school.

My family’s move from Santa Rosa to West­lake, Daly City, before my last year in high schooI, left me with no connec­tions with my previous five years of classes or friends. I created “my art studio” in our family’s garage and I put all my spare time and efforts in drawing and completing the FA lessons, which were mailed to West­port, Connecticut. The lessons empha­sized illus­tra­tion. These correc­tions to my endeavors, shown below, were an obvious “eye-​opener” for my growth toward commer­cial art. The “Simple Simon” lesson gave me a lot of notes to follow when I later re-​drew to subject in line only. In the “circus” assign­ment, I was taught that a painting is not an illus­tra­tion.

PACIFIC TELEPHONE When I grad­u­ated from high school, at age 17, I was still mailing my FA lessons but I was far from able to find employ­ment as an artist. My mother suggested that I pay rent – “Rent?” “But I live here!”

Soon, with a personal connec­tion from my aunt from her WWII long-​distance oper­ator job – I found a job at 3rd & Channel (San Francisco’s longest building) where Pacific Tele­phone Co.’s direc­tory was produced. In those days, banana boats came through the (lifted) Lefty O’Doul Draw Bridge. Work friends and I would sit along the building’s south side eating our lunches, watching the bananas being loaded ashore.

The direc­tory job taught me proof­reading marks. I knew at the time, that the “yellow pages” were produced on the next floor above and small spots of artwork went into some list­ings. But I never took the elevator up to see what might be possible for my level of art training. Thinking, now, of the whole different direc­tion that my life would have taken, I am glad that my inse­cu­rity, held me back.

CITY COLLEGE of SAN FRANCISCO After eleven months at Pac Bell, my mother found a 3 line announce­ment in one of San Francisco’s news­pa­pers offering a “night, adver­tising class” at Lincoln High. There, I met William Davis who was about to join the faculty at City College of San Francisco’s adver­tising curriculum. He convinced me to quit my job and sign-​up at CCSF. The wages that I had saved covered the amount that I owed to my parents for the FA lessons, my on-​going rent, and the art supplies and books that were needed.

CCSF offered lessons in figure drawing, lettering and type design, graphic design, pack­aging, art history, slide and film presen­ta­tion and finally, an intro­duc­tion to art produc­tion and guid­ance in creating a port­folio to show my work. One of my final art assign­ments was a pack­aging concept. Mine was one of three designs that were reported in the college’s news­paper.

(Note : Only as I was scan­ning this college paper did I, for the first time, read this other story in the paper. Never following sports in those days, I found this, an insight into the early life of Mohammad Ali. Appar­ently he took in laundry.)

I had a class assign­ment where the students were to mimic a famous painter to adver­tise a product. I chose Henri Rousseau. I lost my painted rendering of the product that was placed at the bottom-​left of a 2” white panel with just a few copy lines and the Weil logo.

The college had events and art students could donate their art and get a printed sample.

Another lesson learned was that printing on a colored stock, required that the paper had to be lighter than the inks – unless there was the budget to print, in this case, many passes of white and yellow. The impact of my orig­inal sketch was lost, but I did get a printed sample for my port­folio. The lettering class taught all aspects of type and how to “comp it” in a layout.

The figure drawing class was my favorite. Besides drawing with char­coal, conté crayon and pencil this was my first time using a Flo-​master pen. The trick was to keep the nib fairly dry.

ACADEMY OF ART In 1961, CCSF awarded me a (June-​July) summer schol­ar­ship at the Academy of Art on Sutter Street (then, its only loca­tion) with classes in fashion, oil painting, figure drawing and on-​location sketching. One loca­tion was Tele­graph Hill and the instructor was Richard “Pappy” Stevens, the school’s “founding father”. The three sketches below are from one morning’s class. Then, near noon, our class would retire to a coffee shop (where Scoma’s now stands) and “Pappy” would “hold court”. I have no other samples from the summer classes. The value then, of the summer schol­ar­ship, was $150.

IMAGINATION, INC. Several of Mr. Davis’s students and I had a chance to work part-​time as an cell-​painters for Imag­i­na­tion, Inc.’s animated commer­cial for Chevron. The loca­tion was on Kearney Street and it was exciting to have an art job and arrive early to work. Also there was a tempo­rary job with an animator, Milt Kerr, who had rented space in Gabriel Moulin Studio on Second Street.

FIRST INTERVIEWS I had grad­u­ated from CCSF. This was when I began looking for work in adver­tising art. It was June of 1963 and I was twenty-​one. Was I an illus­trator, a graphic designer ? Did I have a creative talent in adver­tising for an ad agency – to create slogans, create layouts ? Should I inter­view with ad agen­cies or art studios ? I tried both.

The large black port­folio that I carried as I searched for work consisted of samples of my efforts rendered in oil paint, water­color and gouache, ink, graphite pencil and pastels (chalks). It was diffi­cult rendering sharp edges with pastels. At that time, felt-​tip color markers did not exist in a large range of colors. The first Magic Markers were uncom­fort­able – a small bottle with a felt-​tip and metal cap.

(In the column at the left, is a “favorite site”: Lou Brooks Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies.)

The collec­tion below shows the usual black port­folio, a story­board and three ad concept samples. There were also 17 addi­tional subjects from which I would choose a small selec­tion that would be of certain interest to an ad agency – concepts, copy, and layout styles for an ad agency­ – or items that were more illus­tra­tive directed toward an art studio job.

I made very many appoint­ments. The top art direc­tors and artists, in those days, would give a personal inter­view and offer a critique of a student’s port­folio. A few that viewed my port­folio were : Herb Briggs, Sam Hollis, Tom Gleason (ad agen­cies)– and Richard Evans and Lowell Herrero (art studios). Given allowance for being young and a student, everyone was very kind, but I didn’t find employ­ment.

WELLS FARGO BANK Then in September of 1963, with a refer­ence from my sister and her friends, I became first a clerk and then a stop-​payment clerk for Wells Fargo Bank on Grant and Market Streets. In my off hours, I kept clip­ping refer­ence and styles for the “morgue” (a scrap file) that was suggested in the FA instructions­ – and I kept prac­ticing art styles. I wasn’t very disap­pointed being at the bank, because I was improving my skills at home and I still made contacts with profes­sionals.

LAST INTERVIEW After four months at the bank, again Bill Davis nudged me into a step that put me on the best path for my future. Butte, Herrero & Hyde at 722 Mont­gomery Street (where I had inter­viewed previ­ously) had employed two artists, Chuck Wertman and Mike Bull, who had decided to free-​lance. I showed my port­folio, but BH&H needed studio skills from me – which was all that I needed to learn to run a successful studio. (I never presented my port­folio again.) A year later when I was 22, BH&H dissolved their part­ner­ship and I started my self-​employment at 728 Mont­gomery Street, renting space from Bill Hyde. I was able to be an illus­trator and an art director, both !

GOOD TIMING AND BAD In my search for employ­ment there was one big lesson : timing.
When I had to step off-​track from my ambi­tious goal, taking other employ­ment–

I kept growing by improving my skills and most impor­tantly, I stayed open to the sugges­tions from others ; my aunt (Pac Tel), my mother (the Lincoln High night class), Bill Davis (CCSF), my sister and friends (WFB), Bill Davis, again (BH&H) and Butte, Herrero & Hyde supporting me into self-​employment.

Each choice I made took me in a new direc­tion. Whether it is a “fork in the road” or the “up- button in an elevator”, a person’s life will change. If you know a young student in need of a sugges­tion, if you see or know some­thing, say some­thing.

Like my mother, I still clip oppor­tu­ni­ties from the news­paper and now, also, from the web.

Ann Thompson